Greetings Midwestern Jive User Group members. I thought I'd try to get the ball rolling here as I'm one of the people who has been bugging Jive to try to get a Midwest User Group started!

Quick introduction for anyone I haven't had the pleasure of meeting in person or virtually yet - I'm the Development and Operations manager for the element14 Community (www.element14.com) at Premier Farnell. We're a global publicly facing community for electronic design engineers. We've been live for about 3 years, are on-premise, on 4.5.3, and are one of Jive's "moderate to majorly" customized customers. We have about 75k members from over 41 countries and we support 9 languages (one of our Jive customizations was to translate the Jive application into Traditional Chinese, Korean and Thai.) I manage a global team of internal developers and operational support folks. We've also worked with Jive professional services as well as several of Jive's partners including SolutionSet and 7Summits (the Midwest's local Jive experts). We're in the early planning stages to upgrade to Jive 5.

As the manager of a fairly well-established community, I'm always looking to connect with people who either share similar issues to brainstorm or commiserate about, or have found a solution they are willing to share. Likewise I'll be happy to share anything I can that may help a fellow Jive customer avoid some of the mistakes we've made or allow them to benefit from a solution that has worked well for us.

Enough about me! I hope many of you will post in reply so we can get to know each other.

If you can make sure to follow this group ... whenever I @mention this group .. .you should be able to be notified when this group is being discussed. A great way to fish for new users as I identify a possible regional match. =)

Hi there! I'm an Internal Community Manager for Critical Mass Chicago. I'm so looking forward to using this group to connect with people, thanks Ryan Rutan for setting it up

We've been using Jive for about a year now, and are getting ready to launch Jive5.0 to our company later this year. I would love to chat with any of you who have already upgraded about any tips or tricks you have for making it go smoothly.

In case you missed it, we're having a get together on the northside near the Ravenswood UP North train stop on Feb 6th. If you're not able to make that one, we can schedule our next one downtown if that's easier for you to get to coming in from Aurora.

Hi - My name is Diana Sharpe and I'm the Social Media manager for ComEd, the electric utility for the Chicago area. We have a small internal Jive community and the JSME tool (which I believe was just renamed.) Among other things, I'm intererested in connecting with those who use Jive for monitoring. We are in the process of upgrading to Jive 5.0. Not much insight to provide so far, as the process has been moving very slowly. We were trained on 5.0 back in October 2011, so I look forward to using it.

Welcome to the group. We have the analytics module for Jive and evaluated JSME but ultimately decided to use Radian6 for monitoring instead as there were several things we wanted to do that we didn't see a way to accomplish with JSME. We are also starting our long process of upgrading to 5.0 (we're in the planning stages at the moment) for our external community. I'll be very interested to hear how it goes for you!

I am working with one of our clients here in Chicago on their Jive 5 implementation....we are about 5 weeks away from a global launch of about 4500 users! I am happy to share experiences with those in the Chicago area. Our client is in the western suburbs, but I live in the northern suburbs....just up the road from Wolters Kluwer.

If you get a meeting together in the Chicago area, I definitely would attend.

Good to hear from you! It would be great to connect with you, Christina, and any others in the Chicago area in Jive 5. We’ve learned a ton the last few weeks as we ramp up to our official live date in mid-February. (about 400 pilot users are on it now)

My client is in the western suburbs…I live up north…and I recall your firm is downtown. We can figure out what works for people. For me, either early in the day or late in the day works best as I can coordinate that around my client schedule. Maybe Feb 6-7 or Feb 20 or later would work best for me.

I'm on the north-side so there or downtown would work for me. Later in the day is best for me too. So, maybe we could meet somewhere in the afternoon of Feb 6th. Those of you downtown, any good locations nearby you'd like to suggest?

Something has come up and I'm not going to be able to meet you all tonight. I'm really bummed as I was looking forward to it.

The reservation is under my name (Christy Zurcher) for 15 at 4:30.

Also, if there are a bunch of you planning to take the Metra to Ravenswood, if you let me know what time you're getting there, I can still have our receptionist call for a cab for you guys to be waiting outside our office (which is literally across the street).

Otherwise, you can usually catch a cab on Lawrence - sometimes you have to wait 10 or so minutes for one to come by.

Again, so sorry I'll miss it. I look forward to hearing or reading posts here in the group about how it goes.

Greetings Midwest User Group - Northwestern University recently licensed Jive Software for an external community and we are preparing to start an implementation project with Jive 5. My background is in enterprise applications so I am definitely a rookie in the social business arena / online communities and would love to learn more about how you are using Jive in your organizations. I am definitely interested in participating in a Midwest User Group meet-up if it took place in Chicagoland!

The North side of Chicago on Feb 6th would be great for me. I could also do someplace in the Gold Coast or North Loop. What time is everyone thinking?

I met you at JiveWorld. Nice to hear from you. I'd prefer someplace close to a train stop if possible. I think it would be good if we can find someplace that has wi-fi, in case we want to show and tell.

For evening, it works best for me if we can meet after 4. I can do later after work as well.

I don't work downtown anymore, but I do work right off the UP North line (Ravenswood). Looking at places around the Ogilvie station, there a few Starbucks and a Pot Belly's within a block or two - Starbucks generally have wi-fi. Here's a link if anyone else wants to have a look around and make a suggestion. It also depends how many we have. By my count, we've got about 5 so we should be able to find some space in a 'Bucks, but I'm certainly open to other ideas.

HI there - I am not a city person but I do know of one place in Ravenswood with free Wifi, is near a train, and always has a lot of roomy tables. Anyone up for Fireside Lounge? http://www.firesidechicago.com/

That is right up the street from our office actually - they have good food (and a large fireplace). I didn't realize they had wifi, but that would certainly work well for me. In fact, if people are taking the train and getting off at Ravenswood (the closest stop) we could meet there and walk/cab up to the restaurant together as I'm literally across the street from the train stop. I've been reluctant to offer up our offices, not because I'd mind hosting you all, but we work in an old warehouse building that is not terribly comfortable/attractive.

However if people would prefer to meet in an office setting as opposed to a restaurant, we could certainly meet here - I can reserve one of our conf rooms (such as they are) and order in some refreshments. I thought we were leaning towards downtown but if north side is preferable, I'd be happy to either host it in our office or meet you all at Fireside.

Okay guys we're all set with a reservation. I made it for 5 as this is who I saw reply they were "in":

Regan

Nikki

Bill

Lauren

Alyssa

If I missed anyone my apologies and please let me know!

For those of you coming up by train, the Restaurant is a few blocks north of the Ravenswood train station, 1.2 miles according to Google Maps. Not a bad walk on a nice day, but in February it might be rough. So, let me know if you're coming by train and which train you're getting in on. I can meet you at the stop and will arrange a cab to take us all up there once the last person arrives. If you get in a little earlier than others we can wait at my office across the street to get out of the cold.

Could you up it 2 more? My name is Rachel Bickel. I'm with Cannon Design, in the Chicago office, and we are in the process of implementing our JIVE 5 internal community for the entire practice (1000+ employees). From what I understand, we are one of the first A&E firms to use JIVE, which has presented both opportunities and challenges. As part of a small knowledge management team, I will likely be one of two enterprise community managers. Nick Cameron, a VP with Cannon, also in Chicago, has been spearheading JIVE for the firm from the very beginning. Could you add us to the reservation? We would love to join you guys, bring questions/ideas etc. Let me know if you will be able to add us to the reservation.

Aside from talking to people about Jive I spend a lot of time working in Jive and on Jive. It's at the point now that if I am watching TV I often find myself creating a social media monitor just to see what is being said about the show. Suffice to say I've drank the Koolaid. It has been 20 months now that I have been with Jive and (like many Jive employees) I try not to think about the possibility of having to work some other way.

I think this is a great idea and as one of two Jive employees IN CHICAGO I'm thrilled to see this get off the ground. I look forward to talking very little and listening an awful lot.

Hi Bill, did you guys start with 5 or were you upgrading from a previous version? If upgrading, I'm definitely interested in any gotchas/pain points and lessons learned from the upgrade. If starting with 5, are you doing a fairly vanilla implementation or do you have some customizations and if so, I'd be curious about what they are and how you implemented them (as apps, or other methods). I'm sure I'll think of more.

Thank you for taking the initiative and heading this group up. Tim Anderson and I am a JIVER located in the "Chain of Lakes Area" Johnsburg, and would be interested in attending User Group meetings. I am one of those "Sales Guys" but take pride in my ability to listen. It's a great testament for me to learn first hand the advances to changing the way work gets done using Jive that our customers are making.